


A Handful of Moments

by PunishedPyotr



Series: Only Ones and Zeros [15]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Attempted Seduction, Bananas, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mario Teaches Typing, and the beleaguered Liquid Snake AI, ominous ending, reupload
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 02:20:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13965264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunishedPyotr/pseuds/PunishedPyotr
Summary: Just a handful. But he won't let them slip through his fingers.





	A Handful of Moments

He’s been so goddamn _busy_ lately.

After last time, Eli’s been doing his best to control his emotions under extreme isolation. He knows that _when_ Mantis comes back he’ll be stressed out and just as frustrated as he is, so he needs to stay calm so that when Mantis comes back he won’t exacerbate his stress by devolving into a childish screaming tantrum about how lonely he is.

Unlike last time, he manages to wring a full conversation out of Emmerich, more or less. Actually, what happens is that Emmerich tells him he’s sick and tired of trying to decipher his emails under his extremely poor typing, and sends him an .exe file that he describes as “a program that’ll actually teach you how to type, so don’t bother me again until you’ve completed it. At least if you’re doing this you won’t be doing anything else that’ll screw us over…”

Of course Eli has to email him back to ask what he’s supposed to _do_ with an .exe, so after several back-and-forths that entail Emmerich giving him increasingly simple step-by-step instructions, Eli manages to get the file installed.

It’s a kid’s game.

Eli flushes angrily when he opens it up and sees that. It’s a _kid’s game_. _Mario Teaches Typing_. Not only is it extremely puerile, but it’s also got the most _grating_ soundtrack he’s ever heard.

After muting the computer (facsimile inside a computer simulation), and spending about fifteen minutes just trying to parse the visuals, Eli gets started on the game out of pure stubbornness. It takes him several hours to complete it and Emmerich can go fuck himself because okay, _yes_ , by the time Eli’s done with the obnoxious little program he can, in fact, type coherently. Not very quickly, and he still sometimes hits the wrong keys, but he can type coherently.

He proceeds to tell Emmerich about this in an email entitled “FUCK OFF, I WIN THIS ROUND” which he leaves the capslock on for.

> _From:_ hal_emmerich@philanthropyngo.ind.er  
>  _To:_ aMqEI6zTCC4Pq9y@2Q2SBJMuHs.sTX1
> 
> **Subject: RE: FUCK OFF, I WIN THIS ROUND**
> 
> Good for you, Liquid. I think you should keep practicing, though. And get an actual hobby that doesn’t involve spamming my inbox at all hours of the day.
> 
> Otacon

Jackass.

Eli abandons the computer and just wanders around Shadow Moses for a while, eventually remembering that he isn’t programmed to freeze to death and deciding to run down to the island’s beach to swim in the ocean for a while. Hey, it kills time. Plus there are actually fish in there, which is… marginally entertaining.

He’s just gotten out of the shower he took to warm up and rinse the saltwater off of him when he senses that Mantis has come back. He tugs on his pants as fast as he can and runs, barefoot, dripping wet, towel still draped over his hair, to where Mantis is - in the residential quarters. He slows down just before he gets to the room Mantis is in, knowing that he should probably be gentle with him right now.

“Hi,” Eli says in as friendly a tone as he can, opening the door and peering in.

“Hello again.” Mantis is lying on the bed with his back to the door.

Eli dries his hair roughly, then drops the towel on the floor and steals up next to Mantis, sitting on the bed and putting a hand on his shoulder. “I missed you.”

“I wish I could have come sooner.”

“It’s alright. Really, you weren’t even gone as long as last time.”

“…”

“And I found some things to do, I know how to type now. Talked with Emmerich a bit.”

“Hn.”

Mantis is depressed. Just what have they been _doing_ to him over at… wherever he is in the real world? Eli really doesn’t know aside from it being a Patriot facility.

“Eli… I’m sorry.”

“Hm?”

“I said last time… that when I came back again, I would have different environment data, so you would no longer have to spend all your time on Shadow Moses…”

“Oh,” Eli says. Damn. He doesn’t have it. And he’d been looking forward to it, too! “It’s alright, Mantis.”

“…you were looking forward to it.”

“Er- yes, but I’m just glad you’re here right now. Alright? That’s all I need.”

Mantis is silent for a while, then says, “alright,” and sits up. Eli quickly gathers him into his arms, nuzzling him and kissing the top of his head. “…you’re all wet, Eli.”

“I went swimming.”

“Ah.”

Eli runs a hand down Mantis’ side. “Still in a bad mood?”

“I am… tired, that’s all.”

“Surely there must be _some_ way I can draw you out of your funk…”

Mantis blinks, then pulls back from Eli and gives him an annoyed look. “Don’t be disgusting.”

“What? I wasn’t—“

“You were! Your thoughts just now…”

Eli cracks a grin. “Well, what’s the matter with wanting to pleasure you? It’d cheer you up, no?”

“No, Eli.”

“Come on. It doesn’t have to be like _last_ time, we can just do something normal. Oh, I know! I can suck your cock.”

“E-Eli!”

“Come on,” Eli says, licking his lips and slipping his hand down to Mantis’ hip - but going no further, just in case Mantis gets _too_ uncomfortable and pushes him away — “I promise I’ll do my best.”

“No. I’m… I’m not in the mood.”

Eli snorts. “You’re never in the mood. I have to _put_ you in the mood. But you’ll like it once I do!”

“No, no— ahh, I do not know how long I can stay, Eli, I am sure that they will call me back soon. We may get interrupted, I think that would be awkward.”

“I’ll make it quick, then. I like a challenge.”

This time Mantis snorts. “Eli,” he says, “you are _terrible_ at oral sex.”

Eli frowns.

“What? It is true. You are entirely passive, it really isn’t very exciting or pleasurable.”

“…nevermind, then…”

Well, even if he can’t convince Mantis to have sex with him ( _right now_ ), it’s still _very_ nice to get to spend some time with him (once he recovers from the blow to his ego). Although he was right about being called back soon, by the time he leaves again both of their spirits are lifted. Eli really hopes it’ll be enough to carry them through the next interminable wait until Mantis can slip away from the Patriots and visit the network again.

In the meantime, at least Eli has a goal in mind for what to do while Mantis is away:

He Google searches “how to give a good blowie”.

148,000 results.

Eli is daunted; sifting through information isn't his strong suit and at any rate, he supposes, most of the information he'll find will be geared towards people who know either more or less than he does already - that is, it's either going to be using terms and such he's never heard, or else it'll outline the mind-numbingly obvious for so long he loses focus anyway. Or at least, that's what Eli assumes. Isn't instruction better when it's one-on-one, anyway?

> _From:_  aMqEI6zTCC4Pq9y@2Q2SBJMuHs.sTX1  
>  _To:_ hal_emmerich@philanthropyngo.ind.er
> 
> **Subject:** **Odd question, but**
> 
> Do you know how to give good head? I need a step-by-step guide and I can't really fidn anything on the google. I thought you might know. If you dont' then I'm sure Snake does, so make sure you ask him too

It's genuinely surprising how quickly Emmerich answers, but he's very unhelpful and just tells him to go back to his Google search, because he is  _not_ answering that question, and adds a side note about how "Snake says you should shave your moustache first, by the way. For all our sakes." It takes Eli a moment to remember that they think he's Ocelot, and is immediately disgusted by the resulting mental image. Or rather by the fact that he doesn't find the idea of Ocelot sucking dick  _more_ disgusting. He'd probably be good at it, though...

Anyway, back to Google. Since Emmerich is useless.

It seems to him that the obvious way to learn is to observe how it’s done in porn, but for one thing watching videos for him has been reduced to moving colors and shapes he can’t identify, and for another thing he’s not naïve enough to think that anything that happens in porn is meant to feel good for the actors, just look good for the viewer. Which might not be so bad, since Eli isn’t the type to get all _that_ flustered if Mantis looked down at him while he was trying to pleasure him with his mouth - hell, a lot of the time it’s hotter that way - but Mantis very rarely has any kind of reaction to visual stimuli.

So instead he finds the online version of some teen magazine that has a bunch of _text-based_ tips on how to work one’s mouth around a dick. Eli reads them for a while, mentally taking notes, then decides that this whole venture is really going to be no good unless he gets some practice in. So he runs off to the kitchen — there are bananas there, after all.

Returning to the computer lab and sitting in front of the monitor again, Eli unpeels his banana and takes a moment to feel self-conscious about this before putting his mouth on it, carefully following the online guide and pretending the banana is Mantis’ prick.

He’s _really_ glad he’s alone right now.

And then when he attempts to deepthroat it he unceremoniously discovers that, in the VR, he has a very functional gag reflex.

Eli spits out the banana, coughing and choking, and topples sideways off his chair, crashing to the floor, this throat tight and his stomach twisting. He gets up on his hands and knees and retches for a few seconds before actually vomiting. Panting, he looks up at the spit-slicked banana on the desk. What the fuck? Why would his AI have a _gag reflex?_ He hadn’t had one in real life for _years_ \- it’d been systematically destroyed back when he was still a teenager.

_Come to think of it, actually…_ , Eli thinks, sitting up and wiping his face with his sleeve. A lot of the traits his AI “body” has are a tad strange. Like the gag reflex, for one, or the ability to blush when he’s embarrassed or aroused, which he can’t imagine why either one of those would come up during the Shadow Moses incident and/or the virtual simulation thereof. And, and, even if gagging somehow makes sense, what’s up with the ability to vomit? He’d been pretty sure literally nothing existed or could exist in his stomach.

And speaking of that, why _are_ his internal organs so fastidiously detailed, anyway? He knows firsthand how realistic they are - and that seems _odd_. Almost like they were expecting Raiden to turn Shadow Moses into a gorefest while he was going through the-

Wait, that probably _was_ it. Sending him through VR had been partially to observe him and collect data about his psyche, hadn’t it? Eli’s pretty sure he recalled someone saying something about that once, back when he was still stuck as an arm unfairly attached to Ocelot’s body. So perhaps the logic here was that, should Raiden go off the deep end and start trying to rape or mutilate Eli - or anyone else on the island - whoever was observing his simulation run wouldn’t stop him, and just keep watching to see what he did. In the meantime, it all had to be terribly realistic so that Raiden wouldn’t suddenly remember that none of this was real and snap out of it.

Eli feels sick again, thinking about that. Although, at least, from his admittedly really brief encounters with Raiden, he thinks he’s safe in assuring himself that nothing like that _had_ happened while Raiden was going through the VR… sure, that man had clearly had a few issues, but he didn’t seem completely unhinged. Rather earnest, actually. Pathetically guilt-riddled about his past as a child soldier. So... harmless?

As Eli is doing his best to clean up the vomit soaked into the carpet (he wishes he knew how to just delete it out of the VR parameters without fucking something up), he realizes that he has a way to confirm whether or not Raiden _had_ done anything… weird during his VR training. Even if Eli didn’t inhabit this body back then, the thought that something possibly had happened still made him feel a little… violated. He's well-acquainted with the feeling already, and he hates it and would do anything to chase it away.

Liquid’s reaction to seeing Eli again is instantaneous and unfriendly.

“Get the fuck away from me, you freak.”

“Rude,” Eli snorts. “Look, I just have a question.”

Liquid puts a good amount of distance between himself and Eli before making a go-ahead gesture.

“Why do I have a gag reflex?”

“…what?”

“And why are my internal organs so realistic?” He explains his conclusions to Liquid, who blinks.

“I think so,” he says.

“Really?”

“Yes. It _was_ an observance of ‘Snake’’s psyche. The VR had to be ready for anything. Of course if ‘Snake’ went off the rails then we were all programmed to try and move things back to how the incident went down in real life-”

“Or at least _your_ understanding of it.”

“—so of course we would all have reacted very poorly to ‘Snake’ attempting anything like that… I believe that’s the reason why I was coded to be so uncomfortable with sex, so that an attempt to seduce me would only backfire.”

“Oh. I see.” So that _hadn’t_ been based off of Eli’s own selective tetchiness about sex… that’s a bit of relief, he can’t help it but nonetheless he finds it pretty childish and embarrassing. “So… did anything ever, well, _happen?_ ”

Liquid pauses to consider it for a moment. “I’m not sure,” he says at length. “There was one time he attempted to seduce me, but I think that was done as a joke or a dare by someone he knew. He went back to trying to shoot me thirty seconds later.”

“Huh…” Honestly, Liquid hopes it wouldn’t have worked even _without_ the artificial discomfort module — he knew AIs could only see users in the form of Solid Snake, so being seduced by his brother… uh…

“I suppose if he ever mutilated the bodies I wouldn’t really know - the simulation ends very shortly after I die, so he never got the chance to do anything to my corpse.” The way Liquid speaks about this so frankly is a little unnerving… “As far as I know, he never did anything strange to anyone while they were still ‘alive’.”

“That’s good to know,” Eli says uncertainly. Still, the fact that the programmers had accounted for this is disquieting. And far from the first time the existence of his AI has felt like a huge incursion on his privacy and bodily autonomy…

Liquid, as usual, doesn’t want to spend time with Eli and Eli really can’t stand himself so he deactivates him again and tries to find something else to do.

Enough time passes between then and when Mantis next comes back that if it weren’t for the smell of vomit in the computer lab, Eli would have forgotten about the whole incident entirely. But as it stands, the computer lab still smells like vomit and Eli has to swallow his pride and ask Mantis for help resetting the carpet when he _does_ return.

He returned in an almost uncharacteristically (at least as of late) good mood.

“I can do one better,” he whispers to Eli, putting an arm around his shoulders.

“?”

With a flicker, the whole scene changes. Suddenly it’s hot. And bright. And the elevation has dropped, leaving Eli to drop half a foot and stumble the landing, falling flat on his ass. Mantis reaches the sandy ground more gently, floating down and chuckling.

Eli looks around.

“This is…!”

It’s _Angola_. Eli recognizes it as if he’d just been here yesterday. Everything so _green_ , and the horizon stretches far into the distance, and the sky is blue and endless, the sun bright, and Eli feels like he’s melting (in a good way!) in this heat after spending the exact same snowy day, over and over, on Shadow Moses for the better part of a year now.

“God, Mantis, I love you,” he breathes, looking up at him.

“I thought you might enjoy this,” Mantis says warmly. “This was part of a virtual safari program, I can bring you the other locations as well but I only know how to install one at a time.”

“This is _more_ than fine, Mantis.” Eli stands up and brushes himself off.

“There are no limits here,” Mantis says, “once you leave the pre-rendered area, the landscape will begin to be randomly generated. It should look much the same, unless you walk too far.”

“Alright.”

“Also, there are no manmade structures here - it is nothing but pristine nature. I will show you how to switch the environmental data back to Shadow Moses so you can still have access to books and showers and such before I go.”

“Alright. Sounds good.” He starts poking around in a bush, then jumps back with a startled yelp as a pangolin lumbers out. “Animals?” he says, excited.

“Of course. I did say I pulled this from a virtual safari program, did I not?”

Eli looks around, shadowing his eyes. Ah, yes, now that Mantis has brought it up - he _does_ see a herd of African elephants in the far distance.

“Only the interesting ones, though,” Mantis says, reaching into another bush and coaxing a virtual Congo mantis onto his hand. “I left out the mosquitos.”

“Ha. Well, _I’m_ certainly going to enjoy myself!”

“Hm?” Mantis turns around just in time to see Liquid sprint over to a creekbed and hurl himself into it, rolling down the bank and getting dirt all over himself before splashing into the water, emerging a moment later, laughing, a struggling river frog in his hands.

He’s got the biggest grin on his face as he beams up at Mantis.

“You’re adorable,” Mantis says.

“Are you talking to me or the bug on your finger?”

“I will leave that for you to decide.”

The sun is setting, brilliant and orange, by the time Mantis says that he needs to return to the girl. Usually he leaves quickly so as not to arouse suspicion, but he’s hesitant this time, clutching Eli’s hand and squeezing it just a bit tighter as he stares at the horizon.

“It’s alright, Mantis, just go,” Eli says, “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Lately… things at the facility…”

“Hm?”

“There has been something going on… I do not know the details. Attacks at the perimeter, I think. Everything’s been thrown in chaos, security is impossibly tight… thankfully cybersecurity doesn’t seem to have been affected, they may have noticed me going into the network if it had.”

“Oh,” Eli says. Mantis has never mentioned any of this.

He squeezes his hand tighter. His fingers are trembling. “I don’t know,” he says quietly, “when I will be back.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

“…perhaps I might not be _able_ to come back. I heard… a rumor. That the attackers are targeting the girl. I might… I… might…”

Liquid brings Mantis’ hand up to his mouth and kisses the back of it. “I’ll wait for you,” he says again. “Even if I have to wait until all my circuits disintegrate and I die a third time in order to see you again… I will wait.”

“Eli…”

“We’ll see each other again. I promise. Now go.”

Mantis nods. A moment later, Eli’s hand is empty and he’s alone, except for the drone of wildlife and wind. He sighs, lying on his back and staring up at the velvet-purple sky, watching the first stars come out.

And he waits.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea if MTT would be an .exe file, because I’ve used Macs for my whole life, I really don’t know what an .exe file is but it sounds about right


End file.
